Nov 16, 2007

Enough already!

I'm looking at my BBC News feed now and, yet again, it seems the non-story that is Madeleine McCann is again top news. Third top story on their front page in fact, leaping ahead of such trivial matters as over 200 dead Bangladeshi's, the continual erosion of civil liberties in Pakistan, sanctions being put on Iran and other little items of minor interest like that.

Of course, its no news the media is totally and utterly full of shit on this whole story. Anyone with half a brain forced to live in the UK between May and September could have told you that. And this is just another in the long line of blog posts blasting the media and, to a lesser extent, the McCann family themselves, who have been complicit in the entire coverage.

Now, the information in the first paragraph is damning enough, especially when one considers the nature of story: namely that one of the friends of the family repeated their original story they told the Portugese police. However, I want to add in something which is more comparable with the McCann story, something to show the true problems and tragedy involved in the level of coverage given so far.

I went to the Website MissingChildren.co.uk, to see how many children had gone missing since June of this year. Its 29. Since Madeleine McCann went missing, 29 more families have had their lives torn apart and lived in daily anguish. But does anyone know the name of Derrick Ayebare? Or Paige Chivers? Or Telvin Timba? I bet almost no-one, outside those affected, could even tell you those names, let alone know what they look like.

Of course some are older than Madeleine, up to 17 in many cases. But so what? As Bill Hicks would point out, they suddenly reach a certain age and they're off you're fucking love list? In the case of Telvin, he's even younger, only 2 years old, and yet not a word from the media on his vanishing. Of course, the other interesting thing is how many of these 29 children are not white, and do not come from well-to-do middle class suburbs. Not that I'm suggesting in any way that the UKtabloidsareracist or anything, oh no.